Przewalski horse

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Przewalski horse
Przewalski's horse (Equus ferus przewalskii)

Przewalski's horse ( Equus ferus przewalskii )

Systematics
Superordinate : Laurasiatheria
Order : Unpaired ungulate (Perissodactyla)
Family : Horses (Equidae)
Genre : Horses ( equus )
Type : Wild horse ( Equus ferus )
Subspecies : Przewalski horse
Scientific name
Equus ferus przewalskii
Polyakov , 1881
Przewalski horses

The Przewalski horse ( Equus ferus przewalskii ) [ pʐɛˈvalski ], also called Takhi , Mongolian Тахь , Je-ma / Yěmǎ Chinese 野马 , Asian wild horse or Mongolian wild horse , was previously the only subspecies of the wild horse that has survived in its wild form to this day has held. A publication in the specialist journal Science in 2018 shows that Przewalski horses were botai horses that were feral around 5000 years ago . It is named after the Russian expedition traveler Nikolai Michailowitsch Prschewalski , who brought the skin and skull of the wild horse species largely unknown in the western world and not yet scientifically described to St. Petersburg from one of his expeditions to Central Asia in 1878.

The Przewalski horse was already very rare at the time of its first scientific description. The last Przewalski horse living free was seen in 1969. However, the Przewalski horse has survived to this day, as some large landowners and zoos continued to breed the species in captivity. Shortly after the end of World War II , however, fewer than 40 individuals were kept in human care. Foals of this subspecies were only born in the Prague Zoo and Hellabrunn Zoo . The establishment of a herd book and breeding in some zoos has allowed the number to rise again to 2,000 individuals. Several initiatives are trying to re-establish Przewalski horses in the wild. The international stud book is kept in Prague, the EEP stud book in Cologne Zoo .

Appearance

anatomy

A short standing mane is characteristic of Przewalski horses

Przewalski horses have a head-trunk length of 220 to 280 centimeters - in addition there is a tail 99 to 110 centimeters long (with hair; without hair: 38 to 60 centimeters) - and a height at the withers between 120 and 146 centimeters. They weigh between 200 and 300 kilograms. Stallions are slightly larger than mares with a height at the withers of 138 to 146 centimeters. Przewalski horses thus correspond in their body mass to a small to medium-sized domestic horse. The physique looks stocky because of the broad trunk. The neck is short and thick, the head appears large in relation to the body and is stretched box-shaped. In profile, the head line is straight to clearly rammed. One of the distinguishing features between domestic horses and Przewalski horses is that the angle between the upper and lower profile lines is sharper in the Przewalski horse. In adult Przewalski horses it is 16 ° to 18 ° 30 ', while domestic horses have an angle of 25 to 32. The upper lip protrudes slightly above the lower lip. The nostrils are bordered dark. The edges of the ears are lined with black on the inside and outside.

The back is straight, the croup is gently rounded and not split. The legs are strong and coarse. Like domestic horses, Przewalski horses have chestnuts on the insides of the legs , which sit on the forelegs above the wrists and on the hind legs under the hocks.

Coat color and coat

Przewalski horse with reddish colored fur

The wild-caught animals that were caught at the beginning of the 20th century show a certain variability in terms of their coat color. In addition to those with a gray-yellow or isabel-colored coat, there were also some reddish-brown specimens among them, but they had isabel-colored to white legs and a similar abdomen. Photographs from 1954 that were made of herds of wild horses in Mongolia show such differently colored individuals within a herd. They are proof that the different coat coloration is not an indication of another subspecies, but belongs to the normal variability of this wild horse form. In today's conservation breeding a darkened Isabel type prevails; which also has a so-called flour mouth. The clearly lighter color of the snout region is called the flour mouth. As before, however, there are also dark brown or reddish-colored individuals as well as individuals in which this flour mouth is missing. A meal of flour is typical for wild or semi-wild horses.

The summer coat of the Przewalski horses is short and smooth. The long and woolly winter fur, on the other hand, looks shaggy. The guard hairs of the winter coat can have a length of five to seven, the wool hair a length of 2.5 to 3.5 centimeters. Often the horses then have a strong throat and whiskers and occasionally even a chest mane.

badge

Przewalski horse with leg stripes, shoulder cross and eel line in Salzburg Zoo .

Przewalski horses usually have a dark eel line , the width and intensity of which varies from person to person. In addition to the eel line, most Przewalski horses also show signs of a so-called shoulder cross . This usually begins a little before the end of the mane on the front part of the withers and runs diagonally forward. Occasionally Przewalski horses also have leg stripes. These transverse, brown or black-brown bandages are found especially on the back of the forelegs.

Blessen or markings also occur in Przewalski horses. They are not an indication that domestic horses can be found in the ancestral line of the wild horse.

Mane and tail

Upper tail of the Przewalski horse with the characteristic short hair and the eel line

The mane and tail hair are dark brown to black. Unlike domestic horses, Przewalski horses usually change the mane hair and the hair at the top of the tail beet once a year. The shape of the mane therefore varies depending on the season and the physical condition of the animal. Physically fit Przewalski horses usually have a short, standing mane in midsummer, which is often surrounded by a light-colored hair sleeve. When viewed in profile, the mane ends at the level of the ears, the horses often have no forehead. Shortly before last year's hair is changed, some of the front mane hairs fall into the forehead and the now much longer mane hairs often tilt to the side. Horses in which the hair change does not occur or is delayed due to physical limitations or stress, very often have tilted manes and forehead. If the horses are kept individually and there is no mutual hair and coat care that supports the hair change, the horses also often have tilted manes and forehead.

In Przewalski horses, long black tail hairs only grow on the lower half of the tail beet. This distinguishes them from domestic horses, where long, hard tail hairs grow from the tail root. On the upper half of the beet's tail, the Przewalski horses grow hair as long as a finger on both sides. In the middle runs a short-haired line as a continuation of the eel line.

distribution

Today's distribution since the resettlement

Until the Science publication in 2018, the Przewalski horse was considered the eastern form of the wild horse that once colonized the entire Eurasian steppe. At the end of the 19th century, Przewalski's horses were probably only found in Djungaria . Information on catch and sighting locations from this period can be assigned to a region ranging from 85 to 95 ° E and 44 to 50 ° N. No reports of sightings of wild horses were published between 1903 and 1947, the last time a wild horse was caught. Only in the 1950s and 1960s there were isolated reports of sightings again. The last sighting on Chinese territory was in the late 1950's. In 1969 wild Przewalski horses were sighted by an expedition organized by the Biological Institute of the Academy of Sciences of Mongolia. This is the last observation so far. All observations come from the region of Tachin-Shara-Nuru . The observation area is 93 to 94 ° E and 45 to 46 ° N.

habitat

Saxaul is one of the key plants in the habitat of the Przewalski horses

The areas from which the last reports about Przewalski's horses come are barren and wind-exposed plateaus, the vegetation of which consists predominantly of dense and tall Saxaul ( Haloxylon ammodendron ). In addition, tamarisk ( Salicornia herbacea ), the wormwood species Artemisia incana , the grass species Lasiagrostis splendens and Stipa orientalis , Tulipa uniflora and Rheum leucorhizum also grow there . Reaumuria soongorica can be found where the soil has a higher salt concentration . The landscape structure is strongly undulating. The ground is hard and gravelly to stony.

The daytime temperatures are subject to fluctuations of up to 25 degrees, as the nights are also very cold in summer. January is the coldest month with average temperatures of −15 to −18 degrees. In the summer months, the air temperature can be up to 40 degrees. The small amount of precipitation falls mainly in the summer months and rarely exceeds more than 100 mm per year. The mammals that are also found in the habitat of the Przewalski horse include jiggetai (Mongolian half donkey ), saiga antelope and wolf .

The meager food supply forces the Przewalski horses to go on long hikes. While they can cover their water needs with snow in the winter months, in summer they can be found in the wider vicinity of water points. They usually return to the watering holes every day, as in extreme cases they can remain without water for a maximum of four days.

Causes of the decline in stocks

Przewalski horses are refugees from culture who, due to hunting by humans and increasing food competition with domestic animals, withdrew to increasingly barren locations. The jungle where Przewalski's horses were last sighted, with its meager food supply and few watering places, does not correspond to an optimal wild horse habitat. In this refuge, too, Przewalski horses were increasingly harassed. In the 1960s, Mongolian shepherds began to graze their flocks in the mountain valleys of the Tachin-Shara-Nuru during the summer. Accordingly, wild horses avoided this region and stayed in the Jungarian Gobi during the summer . Only during the winter do they change to the Tachin-Shara-Nuru.

In 1948 and 1956, two hard winters occurred in the region, in which the nomads living there lost a large part of their livestock because they could no longer find enough food. It is very likely that these winters were also detrimental to the Przewalski horse population. At the same time, the hunt for wild horses increased. The Chinese government settled in the border region of Kazakhs , who lived mainly from hunting and regularly ate horse meat. The loss of livestock suffered by the other nomadic ethnic groups as a result of the harsh winters also made the Kazakhs intensify their hunting. Hunting success increased because more modern rifles had a longer range and could be used to fire several shots. Przewalski's horses were believed to have been extinct in the wild by the late 1960s.

Way of life

The behavioral repertoire of Przewalski horses has been compared with that of domestic horses on various occasions over the past 100 years. The investigations should, among other things, provide information about the extent to which domestication has an influence on behavior.

Basically, the behavioral repertoire of Przewalski horses is similar to that of the domestic horse if they are kept under natural conditions. It could be proven very early on that Przewalski horses can be “ tamed ”. In Askanija-Nowa , for example, individual Przewalski stallions have been broken into. Compared to domestic horses, however, Przewalski horses have a higher level of aggression. Mares, for example, have repeatedly attacked alien young animals and bitten or trampled them to death. Stallions show a great willingness to fight other stallions and, when kept in zoological gardens, defend their herd against people they are familiar with. When crossing with domestic horses, this level of aggression is also passed on to the offspring. No further crossings between domestic horse breeds and Przewalski horses have therefore been made.

The herd

Mutual grooming

Przewalski horses live either in pure stallion groups or in small family groups led by a stallion. Family groups usually consist of five to twenty horses. Stallion groups are similar in size, their composition and thus also the herd size are subject to significantly greater changes than those of the family groups.

Przewalski horses are generally very shy. Reports of fishing expeditions such as that of the Grum-Grzhimailo brothers from 1889 describe how the herds used bumps to hide from the eyes of their pursuers, that the lead stallion of a chased herd of Przewalski horses kicked the individual herd members into the drives the desired direction, always stays between the herd and the pursuers and ultimately opposes the pursuers to fight.

When fighting against enemies and rivals, and also when rounding up, the stallion adopts a threatening posture in which he bends his ears, lowers his head with a stretched neck and bares his teeth. Opposing stallions sneak around with this head position and then abruptly attack each other with the aim of running down and biting the other horse. Young stallions that have reached sexual maturity are generally expelled from the herd by the lead stallion. Mares who resist the stallion are usually bitten in the mane comb and less often in the legs. Mares occasionally attack each other with their ears flat and teeth bared. However, they usually resolve their conflicts by attacking each other by wedging their back hooves.

Sexual maturity and gestation period

Two day old foal

Among the wild-caught animals imported at the beginning of the 20th century, there was a stallion and a mare, which each successfully reproduced when they were four years old. The remaining wild-caught animals were significantly older when they first fathered offspring. A stallion and a mare were already well past ten years old when they were successfully bred for the first time.

In the eighth generation of breeding, Przewalski horses are sexually mature much earlier than those caught in the wild. Stallions are able to successfully cover a mare as early as 25 months of age. Mares are receptive from their fourteenth month of life. The better nutritional situation and the different social relationships in captivity probably contribute to earlier sexual maturity. However, if the parents are not physically fully developed, the foal mortality rate is higher than the average. The gestation period in Przewalski horses is between 47 and 51 weeks. Colts tend to be carried longer than fillies.

Przewalski's horses living in the wild probably gave birth to their young between late April and early July. Foals that were born in other months had a significantly lower chance of survival because of the more unfavorable climate or poor nutrition.

The 2411 foals born in captivity up to 1994, whose date of birth is precisely known, show a seasonal distribution. 68 percent of foals are born between April 21 and July 10. At 30 percent, May is the month with the highest birth rates. The remaining births are largely evenly distributed over the entire year.

Of the 2469 Przewalski horses drawn in captivity up to January 1, 1994, only 41% had offspring. However, some of the demonstrably fertile horses had very high fertility and were able to reproduce well into old age. The mare "Halma" with the stud book number 393 carried 19 foals successfully. The mare Sira with the stud book number 173 was 22 years old at the time of the last successful mating. The stallion "Basil" with the stud book number 293 mated for the last time at the age of 26 years and 10 months. He is the father of a total of 71 foals and thus one of the Przewalski stallions with the most offspring.

Jiri Volf evaluated the death dates of all Przewalski horses born in captivity between 1899 and 1993. After that, 43 percent of all foals die within the first two years of life. Stallions have a relatively high mortality in the third year of life, when the struggles for social position in the herd are an increased stress factor. In captivity, Przewalski horses can reach an age of over 34 years. In the wild, they are likely to reach this high age only very rarely.

Systematics

The status as a subspecies of the wild horse

Portrait of a Przewalski horse

The lines of development between the domestic horse and the Przewalski horse diverged between 120,000 and 240,000 years ago. House horses were domesticated much later and therefore do not descend from Przewalski horses.

The Przewalski horse differs from the domestic horse in the following ways :

  • It has a higher number of chromosomes (66 instead of 64).
  • Both the hair at the edge of the mane and the short hair at the edge of the tail beet make the change of coat .
  • The profile line of the head in the Przewalski horse has an angle of 16 ° to 18 ° 30 ', while that of domestic horses is between 25 and 32.
  • All 6 skeletons examined by Eberhard Trumler have 19 instead of 18 thoracic vertebrae.

On the basis of these research results, the Przewalski horse is sometimes viewed as a separate species and separated from the domestic horse, it then bears the scientific name Equus przewalskii . However, the two are unrestrictedly fertile with each other. Just as often, therefore, both are grouped together with the extinct tarpan into a single species. However, if one considers the domestic horse as a separate species ( Equus caballus ) and the tarpan together with the Przewalski horse as a different species ( Equus ferus ), this can be referred to as Equus ferus przewalskii .

Prehistoric distribution

Two sides of a leg bone from the Pleistocene Equus przewalskii. Found at Worms.

The wild horses, which are distributed over large areas of Eurasia, were one of the character species of the late Pleistocene cold-steppe ungulate fauna. Their originally large distribution area was significantly reduced when the glacial steppes were reforested in the early Holocene due to the onset of climatic changes. The wild horses, which were adapted to largely tree-free steppes and tundras, therefore became increasingly rare in both the Mesolithic and the Neolithic. Wild horses still lived in Central Europe, in the lowland areas of Central Europe, possibly also in the area of ​​today's Spain and in the steppes of today's Russia and the Ukraine.

There is scientific consensus that not only one wild horse form occurred in this large area of ​​distribution. However, it has not yet been adequately investigated which intra-species variability was characteristic of wild horses and where the distribution limits of the individual subspecies ran. Two wild horse forms are generally recognized: The Przewalski horse is generally considered to be the eastern form of the wild horse. In addition, there was another wild horse form, the Tarpan . It was still to be found in the steppe areas of the Ukraine until the end of the 19th century and was then eradicated by hunting. It is a matter of dispute whether the wild horses that occurred in western and northern Europe in prehistoric times belonged to these two forms or whether there were other forms and perhaps even other species.

Man and Przewalski's horse

The illustrations from the Pleistocene

In south-west France, Italy and northern Spain depictions of solipeds have been preserved in some caves , which date from the Pleistocene and are up to 20,000 years old. In addition to the depiction of donkeys and half donkeys, there are over 600 images of wild horses. They were widespread in the younger Stone Age from Europe to North and Central Asia and were well known to Stone Age people as hunting prey. Typical wild horses are shown, which according to the zoologist Jiri Volf are not necessarily exclusively depictions of Equus ferus przewalskii . It is more likely that the European illustrations are of the wild horse species that was later domesticated. Relics of this kind can be found today in Exmoor (England) and on the Sorraia River (Portugal). Here, types of horses have survived that are almost identical in shape, drawing and even bone structure to the Stone Age bone finds in these regions. The representations are proof of the importance that wild horses had as hunting prey for Stone Age people. They are also important today for the breeding of wild horses because, in addition to the photos and skins of the first wild animals, they give an impression of the variable appearance of wild horses. Jiri Volf comes to the conclusion on the basis of the Stone Age illustration that a forehead, deviations in coat color and an occasional hanging mane do not indicate a mix with domestic horses. Rather, they belong to the range of variation of this wild horse form.

Insightful representations of wild horses can be found in the caves of Lascaux , Labastide , Le Portel , Limeuil , La Madeleine , Combarelles , Altamira and Niaux , among others . In Niaux, among other things, a horse classified as a mare is depicted, which has a pronounced chin and whiskers. Another drawing indicates the lighter color of the fur on the belly of the wild horses. An impressive, realistic ivory carving depicting the head of a neighing horse has been found in Mas d'Azil .

Reports on the Przewalski horse from Asian cultures

In western culture, the Przewalski horse was not noticed until the end of the 19th century. In Asian culture, the Przewalski horse is mentioned earlier and more often.

A Tibetan monk named Bodowa, who lived around 900 AD, mentioned Przewalski horses in his writings. There is also a record of an encounter between Genghis Khan and Przewalski's horses in 1226, when his riding horse shied so violently that the Mongol ruler lost his footing and fell from his back. In 1630 a Przewalski horse was sent as a gift to a Manchur emperor from Mongolia, and from 1750 it is recorded that another Manchurian emperor organized a large hunting expedition on these horses, during which between 200 and 300 horses were captured.

Przewalski's “discovery” and Polyakov's first scientific description

The first person from Western cultures to report an encounter with Przewalski's horses is John Bell, a Scottish doctor in the service of Tsar Peter I. He traveled to Beijing from Saint Petersburg and mentioned the wild horses in a book published in 1763. However, his report remained largely unknown. Carl von Linné did not consider the Przewalski horse in his Systema Naturae . In 1841, the British soldier and naturalist Charles Hamilton Smith described an Asinus equuleus in his work on horses , which was shown in Calcutta and came from Mongolia. The description corresponds to that of a Przewalski horse and is probably the first scientific description of this wild horse form. However, since there is no museum specimen that can be used to prove with certainty that Smith is referring to this wild horse form, the scientific name przewalskii still takes precedence over equuleus .

The person usually associated with the "discovery" of this form of wild horse is the Russian expedition traveler Nikolai Michailowitsch Prschewalski . Przewalski stayed in the city of Saissan from late October 1877 to early April 1878 . During his stay, Przewalski regularly received the skins and skeletal parts of animals that had been shot by Russian soldiers from the commander of the Russian border post . This included the skin and skull of a 14 to 17 month old wild horse. As far as we know today, this horse was shot in the eastern jungle.

Przewalski was ordered back to St. Petersburg in the spring of 1878. There he handed over his collection of exhibits to the zoological museum. The skin and skull of the wild horse were initially classified as the remains of a tarpan . In 1881 Iwan Semjonowitsch Polyakow , a member of the research staff of this museum, published the first description of the species Equus przewalskii . As early as 1880, after returning from his third expedition, Nikolai Przewalski reported that he had twice observed herds of wild horses.

The first wild horse imports

The Przewalski horses that are now kept in captivity or have since been released into the wild can all be traced back to a small number of wild horse foals that were caught between 1899 and 1904. The private collector Friedrich von Falz-Fein gave the first impetus for trapping campaigns . The hunting expeditions were organized by a businessman with the surname Assanow, resident in Biysk , Tomsk Governorate , who not only sold the foals to private enthusiasts such as Falz-Fein, but also to other animal dealers and zoos. Most of the wild horses that came to Western Europe were introduced by Carl Hagenbeck . During this time, Hagenbeck equipped several fishing expeditions to Inner and Central Asia and also caught wild horses during this time. He also bought a large number of wild horses from the merchant Asanov.

From today's point of view, the fishing method was brutal. Usually the adult mares of a herd were shot down in order to then capture the leaderless foals and yearlings. For the foals, which were still dependent on breast milk, they had brought house horse dams, whose foals were killed so that they could adopt the Przewalski foals. Even so, the first horses caught all died shortly after they were captured. It was not until 1899 that the first captured animals were brought alive to the Askania Nova estate owned by Friedrich von Falz-Fein.

Today's species conservation

Between 1899 and 1903 a total of 54 individual animals found their way to zoological gardens and private enthusiasts. A large number of the 24 stallions and 30 mares died, sometimes before they reached sexual maturity. Only twelve of them have been shown to have offspring. If one also includes the Mongolian house mare, who was covered by a Przewalski stallion and whose son was used in Halle as a stallion for the Przewalski mares kept there, the entire current population comes from a total of 13 horses.

Prague has the longest tradition of the Przewalski breedings that exist today. In 1921 and 1923 Prague kept a total of three horses from the pet garden of the Halle Agricultural Institute, which formed the basis of the breed. However, once a Mongolian mare was crossed into this line. In Hellabrunn, where Przewalski breeding began a little later than in Prague, horses from the Askania line were also bred in addition to the so-called Prague breeding line. The important breeding line in Askanija-Nova, Ukraine, went out in the war years from 1941 to 1943. The breed was re-established there in 1949. The basis of the new Askanier line was a mare who was the last wild horse to be caught in the wild, two mares from the Prague breed and a stallion from the breed of the Hellabrunn Zoo. The genetic makeup of all Przewalski horses kept in captivity is influenced by Mongolian domestic horses.

The international stud book of the breed is kept in Prague today. The studbook was initiated by Erna Mohr , one of the scientific staff at the Zoological Museum in Hamburg. As part of her work on a monograph about the Przewalski horse, she found that at the beginning of 1956 only 41 horses were still in human care and that this species was threatened with extinction. On her initiative, the zoo in Prague hosted the first international symposium on the rescue of the Przewalski horse in autumn 1959. In 1980 the number of animals kept in captivity had risen to 416; in 1994 it was around 1,400. A population of Przewalski horses is built up together with bison and red deer in the 1,860 hectare core zone of the Sielmanns natural landscape of Döberitzer Heide . In the future, the animals should live there largely unaffected by humans.

In the Austrian National Park Neusiedler See-Seewinkel , where the wild horse is also said to have been at home, a breeding program has been in operation since the 2000s, of which four horses could be released into the wild by 2012. In Germany, numerous small reserves (25 to 200 hectares) have been maintained for the past few years that serve to preserve the species (including Augsburg, Tennenlohe , Gießen, Hanau, Babenhausen and the former military training area of ​​Aschaffenburg ).

In August 2013 a first foal was born again in Tyrol after centuries. Originally at home here, it was born in captivity in the archaeological Ötzi village in Umhausen . The breeding between a stallion from Munich's Hellabrunn Zoo and the eight-year-old mare Roxane from the Hellbrunn Zoo in Salzburg takes place under the direction of the Innsbruck Alpine Zoo . The open-air museum is the only breeding facility for wild horses in Tyrol.

Genetic analyzes provided evidence that the Przewalski lineages that still exist today have DNA from domesticated horses to varying degrees .

Reintroduction

Przewalski's horse and trample at Salzburg Zoo , which belongs to the International Takhi Group

Several projects to reintroduce Przewalski horses to their original range have been ongoing since the 1990s. In 1992 the first animals were flown to the south-west of Mongolia and released into the wild in 1997 in the Great Gobi-B Conservation Area . Settling in the Gobi turned out to be difficult due to the lack of food and water. After the first released Przewalski horses suffered from diseases, the International Takhi Group (ITG) was founded in 1999 and has been leading the project ever since. Members of the ITG are individuals as well as various zoos such as the Nuremberg Zoo and the Karlsruhe City Zoo in Germany, the Salzburg Zoo in Austria, the Zurich Wilderness Park with the Langenberg Wildlife Park and the Bruderhaus Wildlife Park in Switzerland as well as the Prague Zoo in the Czech Republic, in which the Animals are also prepared for relocation to Mongolia. Decimation by piroplasmosis is now countered by vaccination. In the extremely harsh winter of 2000/2001, 20 of the 60 animals died until then. By 2005 the inventory had grown back to almost 100 copies. In the Langenberg Wildlife Park, the takhis were observed by satellite and it was found that the animals are also nocturnal. They are now coping very well with the extreme climatic conditions and the scarcity of water in the Mongolian desert. In 2012 there were 130 animals.

Wild horses in the Chustain Nuruu National Park

Another project is dedicated to the resettlement in the Chustain Nuruu National Park in central Mongolia, which is jointly run by the Mongolian Society for the Conservation of Nature and Environment (MACNE) and the Dutch Foundation for the Conservation and Protection of Przewalski Horses (FPPPH) . The Chustain Nuruu reserve consists of hilly steppe and offers good grazing grounds and watering holes. Between 1992 and 2000 a total of 84 animals were released there, and they reproduced well. The population of wild Przewalski horses in Chustain Nuruu was almost 200 in 2005.

The Przewalski stocks in Mongolia are still being supplemented by smaller reintroduction campaigns from European zoos: For example, in June 2011 by the Prague Zoo, which released 3 mares and a stallion to strengthen a herd in western Mongolia.

Przewalski horses are also released in the Hortobágy-Puszta in Hungary. This Puszta is the largest Central European steppe area and extends over 100,000 hectares. Together with the Cologne Zoo and the Hortobágy National Park Administration, a population of Przewalski horses with a natural age and gender structure is being built up here. One would like to learn a lot about their food ecology and their social organization. It is hoped that this project will provide essential insights that will support re-naturalization in Mongolia . The difficulties in adapting the animals from zoo keeping to the conditions in Hortobágy also showed that the properties desired in zoo keeping, such as reduced urge to flee and aggressiveness, affect the animals when they are released into the wild. While the former zoo animals therefore found it difficult to get used to, the foals born in Hortobágy have adapted well to their natural habitat in the Hungarian steppe.

Stallion in the Hanau semi-reserve

In Germany, too, species conservation is supported by small reserves. Three such reserves are located in Hesse (Hanau, Gießen, Babenhausen) and are maintained by the Bundesforstbetrieb Schwarzenborn on training grounds that were formerly used by the military. In close cooperation with the zoos Hellabrunn, Nuremberg and Stuttgart and under the leadership of the EEP (European Conservation Breeding Program ), the Przewalski horses from the zoos learn to look after themselves. You only experience care that takes animal protection regulations into account. Since the Hessian reserves were set up on sandy grasslands, the Przewalski horses find a similar feeding situation as in the reintroduction areas. At the same time, with their grazing, they make a contribution to keeping these biotopes open.

Przewalski's horses were also released into the wild in the now almost deserted exclusion zone around the Ukrainian nuclear power plant Chernobyl .

literature

  • Norbert Benecke: Man and his pets - history of a relationship that is thousands of years old. Parkland Verlag, Cologne 2001, ISBN 3-88059-995-5 .
  • Sibylle Luise Binder, Gabriele Kärcher: Wild horses - life in freedom. Müller, Rüschlikon / Cham 2003, ISBN 3-275-01464-1 .
  • Sándor Bökönyi: The Przewalski Horse or The Mongolian Wild Horse. The revival of an almost extinct species. German adaptation by Wolfgang Meid. Institute for Languages ​​and Literatures of the University, Innsbruck 2008 (= Innsbruck Contributions to Cultural Studies , Volume 127), ISBN 978-3-85124-223-2 .
    • The first edition appeared in English in 1970. The new German edition has been expanded and updated by several experts.
  • Lee Boyd, Katherine A. Houpt (Eds.): Przewalski's Horse - The History and Biology of an Endangered Species. State University of New York, Albany 1994, ISBN 0-7914-1890-1 .
    • See in particular: Inge Bouman, Jan Bouman: The History of Przewalski's Horse.
    • and: Colin P. Groves: Morphology, Habitat and Taxonomy.
  • Franziska Roth: Development of the spatial and social organization of Przewalski horses (E. ferus przewalskii) under natural conditions in the pension area (Hortobágy National Park, Hungary). Dissertation. University of Cologne 2002. ( full text ).
  • Jiri Volf: The primeval horse. Westarp Sciences, Magdeburg 1996, ISBN 3-89432-471-6 ( Die Neue Brehm-Bücherei , Volume 249).

Web links

Commons : Przewalski-horse  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. International Takhi-Group: Characteristics of Takhi. From: takhi.org , accessed September 29, 2015.
  2. ^ Przewalski's Horse Facts . National Zoo. Retrieved September 29, 2015.
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  7. Groves, p. 40
  8. Grove, pp. 40f
  9. For more detailed information on body characteristics, see also Groves, pp. 39–48 and Volf, pp. 47–60.
  10. Groves, p. 41
  11. Volf, pp. 45–46 and Groves, pp. 39 and 41
  12. ^ Volf, p. 53 and p. 61
  13. ^ Volf, p. 63f
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  15. ^ Groves, p. 43
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  17. a b Bouman, p. 12.
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  20. ^ Volf, p. 31
  21. Groves, p. 47 and Volf, pp. 73 to 75
  22. Groves, p. 48
  23. ^ Volf, pp. 73-77. Findings about the way of life of the Przewalski horses are based to a large extent on expedition reports. This includes the Grshimailo brothers' expedition report from 1896 and the information collected by Nikolai Mikhailovich Prschewalski
  24. Bouman, p. 15
  25. Vols, p. 30
  26. Bouman, pp. 15-16.
  27. Benecke, p. 292
  28. Bouman, pp. 10-12
  29. ^ Volf, pp. 89f. The other pairs were in their 61st, 73rd, 84th, 98th or 99th months respectively when they were successfully mated or fertilized for the first time
  30. ^ Volf, pp. 90 to 91
  31. ^ Volf, pp. 90 to 91 and 93
  32. up to January 1, 1994, 2469 Przewalski foals were born in captivity according to the Prague stud book
  33. ^ Volf, p. 94
  34. ^ Volf, p. 98
  35. But no family ties. In: Image of Science. December 4, 2003, accessed September 8, 2019 . (New Scientist 2003)
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  38. Bouman, p. 6 and Benecke, p. 290
  39. ^ Volf, p. 25 and Benecke, p. 290
  40. Groves, pp. 55-59
  41. Bouman, p. 5
  42. ^ Volf, pp. 21-27.
  43. Bouman, p. 7
  44. Bouman, p. 8 and Groves, p. 48
  45. Bouman, p. 8
  46. a b Groves, p. 49
  47. ^ Volf, p. 9f. The animal's age was estimated at three years by the first scientist Polyakov. Because of the extensive comparative material available today, this classification has been revised
  48. Carl Hagenbeck: From animals and people - Chapter: On animal catching in Mongolia , Leipzig 1926.
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  53. ^ Volf, p. 130
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